Loom vs ScreenRec
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentScreenRec compared with Loom
Loom is a far better product on every dimension except the ones that matter to a budget: it caps free recordings at five minutes and costs meaningfully more per seat. ScreenRec has no editing, no captions, and a dated interface, but records unlimited length free and runs on Linux. Most teams should pay for Loom; teams that genuinely cannot should use ScreenRec without embarrassment.
Choose Loom if
Distributed teams that want to replace status meetings, code walkthroughs, design feedback, and support explanations with recordings, especially teams already inside Atlassian tools, plus solo operators and small companies who can live inside the free 25-video allowance.
Choose ScreenRec if
Budget-constrained teams, educators, and support and engineering staff on Windows, macOS, or Linux who need to record long sessions and share them privately without paying, and who do not need editing, captions, or AI features.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Loom | ScreenRec |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Video | Video |
| Starting price | $0 (Starter), then $18 per user per month billed monthly (Business) (free plan available) | $8.32 per month billed annually (Pro) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Freemium per-seat subscription with three published tiers and a quote-only Enterprise tier, discounted roughly 17 percent for annual billing. | Freemium with paid tiers priced around storage and bandwidth rather than per seat, billed monthly or annually. Free is licensed for personal use only. |
| Free plan | Starter includes 25 videos per person, a hard five-minute cap per recording, 720p, transcriptions, comments, and emoji reactions, for workspaces of up to 50 members. | 2GB of cloud storage and 2GB of bandwidth, up to 720p with unlimited recording length and no watermark, around 100 recordings and 50 screenshots per month, one user, personal use only. |
| Free trial | Free Starter plan serves as the evaluation path; paid tiers can be trialed from within the product | The free plan is the trial and does not expire |
| Best for | Distributed teams that want to replace status meetings, code walkthroughs, design feedback, and support explanations with recordings, especially teams already inside Atlassian tools, plus solo operators and small companies who can live inside the free 25-video allowance. | Budget-constrained teams, educators, and support and engineering staff on Windows, macOS, or Linux who need to record long sessions and share them privately without paying, and who do not need editing, captions, or AI features. |
| Setup time | Under ten minutes. Install the Chrome extension or desktop app, sign in with Google or your work account, grant screen and microphone permissions, and record. There is nothing to configure before the first useful video. | Ten minutes. Download the application for Windows, macOS, or Linux, create an account for cloud upload and link sharing, grant screen recording permission, and record. There is no workspace configuration or integration setup because there is very little to configure. |
| Learning curve | Near zero for recording. The part teams get wrong is cultural rather than technical: async video only replaces meetings if people agree to watch recordings instead of asking for a call, and that convention has to be set explicitly. | Minimal. The product does a small number of things and does not hide them. The only operational habit to build is storage management, because unlimited-length recording plus a 2GB or 50GB cap means the library needs pruning on a schedule rather than when it fills. |
| Platforms | Chrome extension, macOS desktop app, Windows desktop app, iOS, Android, Web | Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Linux |
| Compliance | SOC 2, GDPR, Covered by Atlassian's enterprise security and compliance program | No SOC 2 or ISO certification publicly marketed for the ScreenRec product |
| Founded | 2015 | 2019 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Distributed team across three countries |
| Ownership | Owned by Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM) | Privately held; built and operated by StreamingVideoProvider |
Strengths and limitations
Loom
Strengths
- The recording experience is still the best in the category: parallel upload means the link is ready instantly, and the extension and desktop app are both genuinely reliable under load.
- Embedding is unmatched, with the player unfurling natively across more than 400 tools including the entire Atlassian suite, Notion, Slack, Figma, and GitHub.
- Transcription and closed captions in more than 50 languages are included on the free tier rather than paywalled.
- Atlassian ownership means real security engineering, SSO and SCIM, custom retention policies, and an uptime SLA, which is more compliance surface than any independent vendor in this category offers.
Limitations
- Zero dynamic personalization: no per-prospect backgrounds, no animated GIF thumbnails generated per contact, no bulk generation from a CSV, and no per-prospect landing pages.
- CRM logging is minimal, and the only first-party CRM connector is Salesforce on the quote-only Enterprise tier, so HubSpot users get nothing native.
- The free tier's five-minute recording cap is much tighter than Vidyard's 30 minutes or Bubbles' unlimited screen recordings, and it stops most real use cases dead.
- Editing is shallow: trim, stitch, text, arrows, and boxes. No multi-track timeline, no zoom and pan, no b-roll.
ScreenRec
Strengths
- Unlimited recording length on every plan including free, which almost no competitor offers and which alone decides the purchase for anyone recording long sessions.
- No watermark on any plan, including free, so output is usable externally from day one.
- Genuine Linux support alongside Windows and macOS, which makes it viable for engineering teams that most of this category quietly excludes.
- Pro at $8.32 a month covering three licensed computers with commercial rights and 50GB of storage is exceptional value.
Limitations
- No editing to speak of. No automatic zoom, no transcript-based editing, no filler word removal, no trimming beyond the basics, so what you record is what you send.
- No transcription, captions, or translation, which rules it out anywhere accessibility is a requirement rather than a preference.
- No AI features at all, which is either a virtue or a disqualification depending on what you need.
- The free plan is licensed for personal use only, so business use requires Pro and the free tier cannot honestly be a company's plan.
Pricing compared
Loom
Freemium per-seat subscription with three published tiers and a quote-only Enterprise tier, discounted roughly 17 percent for annual billing.
- Starter$0
- Business$18
- Business plus AI$24
- EnterpriseCustom
Business at $18 monthly is priced as the category default rather than as a bargain, and after the Atlassian acquisition it stopped being cheap. What you get for it is the most reliable recorder in the category, the best embedding story anywhere, transcription in 50-plus languages, and no usage meter to model. For an internal communication use case that is good value, particularly if you already run Jira and Confluence and can use the bug report flow. For a sales use case it is poor value, because the personalization and CRM machinery that justifies a higher price elsewhere simply is not here, and the one CRM connector Loom does ship is locked behind a quote. Buy it for the team, not for the pipeline.
ScreenRec
Freemium with paid tiers priced around storage and bandwidth rather than per seat, billed monthly or annually. Free is licensed for personal use only.
- Free Forever$0
- Pro$8.32
- Premium$81.66
On pure recording capability per dollar, ScreenRec is the best value in this category and it is not close: unlimited-length, watermark-free recording on a free plan, and $8.32 a month for 1080p across three computers with commercial rights and 50GB of hosting. What you are not buying is any of the modern layer, and that omission is total. There is no zoom, no editing, no captions, no AI, no polish. Judge it as a utility for getting long recordings out of your head and onto a private link, where it is excellent and cheap. Judge it as a video communication platform and it is a decade behind, because it is essentially a free front end to a hosting business.
Editorial verdict on each
Loom
Category LeaderLoom is still the best pure recorder in async video, and the reason is unglamorous engineering: it uploads while you talk, so the link is always ready. Add transcription in 50-plus languages on the free tier, embedding across more than 400 tools, and Atlassian's security program behind it, and it remains the safe default for a team that wants to stop holding meetings. Buy it for internal communication, support explanations, and design and code review, ideally on Business plus AI where filler word removal quietly makes every recording watchable. Do not buy it for sales. There is no dynamic personalization, no per-prospect landing page, and the only CRM connector is Salesforce behind an Enterprise quote. The five-minute free cap and post-acquisition price increases also mean Loom is no longer the cheap option it once was, and buyers who care mainly about price should look hard at Bubbles.
Read the full Loom profileScreenRec
Best ValueScreenRec is the answer to one specific question: how do I record something long, share it privately, and pay nothing or almost nothing. On that question it beats every other tool in this category, because unlimited-length watermark-free recording on a free plan is close to unique, Linux support is genuinely rare, and Pro at $8.32 a month across three computers with commercial rights and 50GB of hosting is exceptional. Everything else about it is a decade behind. There is no editing, no zoom, no captions, no transcription, no AI, and no custom branding, and the interface looks its age. Use it if budget or platform coverage is the binding constraint, if you record long training sessions, or if half your engineers are on Linux. Pay for Loom, Tella, or Zight instead if the video needs to look good, be searchable, or be seen by customers.
Read the full ScreenRec profileLoom profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; ScreenRec last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.